The
BBC And Iraq: Myth And Reality
By John Pilger
Information Clearing
House
06 December, 2003
Greg
Dyke, the BBCs director general, has attacked American television
reporting of Iraq. "For any news organisation to act as a cheerleader
for government is to undermine your credibility," he said. "They
should be... balancing their coverage, not banging the drum for one
side or the other." He said research showed that, of 840 experts
interviewed on American news programmes during the invasion of Iraq,
only four opposed the war. "If that were true in Britain, the BBC
would have failed in its duty."
Did Dyke say all
this with a straight face? Lets look at what research shows about
the BBCs reporting of Iraq. Media Tenor, the non-partisan, Bonn-based
media research organisation, has examined the Iraq war reporting of
some of the worlds leading broadcasters, including the US networks
and the BBC. It concentrated on the coverage of opposition to the war.
The second-worst
case of denying access to anti-war voices was ABC in the United States,
which allowed them a mere 7 per cent of its overall coverage. The worst
case was the BBC, which gave just 2 per cent of its coverage to opposition
views views that represented those of the majority of the British
people. A separate study by Cardiff University came to the same conclusion.
The BBC, it said, had "displayed the most pro-war agenda of any
[British] broadcaster."
Consider the first
Newsnight broadcast after the greatest political demonstration in British
history on 15 February. The studio discussion was confined to interviews
with a Tory member of the House of Lords, a Tory MP, an Oxford don,
an LSE professor, a commentator from the Times and the views of the
Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. Not one marcher was invited to participate,
not one representative of the two million who had filled London in protest.
Instead, a political reporter, David Grossman, asked perversely: "What
about the millions who didnt march? Was going to the DIY store
or watching the football on Saturday a demonstration of support for
the government?"
A constant theme
of the BBCs Iraq coverage is that Anglo-American policy, although
capable of "blunders," is essentially benign, even noble.
Thus, amazingly, Matt Frei, the BBCs Washington correspondent,
declared on 13 April: "Theres no doubt that the desire to
bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially
now to the Middle East... is now increasingly tied up with military
power." The same "good" military power had just slaughtered
at least 15,000 people in an illegal, unprovoked attack on a largely
defenceless country.
No doubt touched
by this goodness, Newsnights Kirsty Wark asked General Sir Mike
Jackson, Chief of the General Staff, if "coalition" troops
"are really powerless to help civilians targeted by Iraqi forces
in Basra." Clearly, she felt no need to check the veracity of the
British claim that Iraqi forces had been targeting civilians in Basra,
a claim that proved to be baseless propaganda.
During the bombing
of Serbia in 1999, Wark interviewed another general, Wesley Clark, the
Nato commander. The Serbian city of Nis had just been sprayed
with American cluster bombs, killing women, old people and children
caught in the open: the horrific handiwork of one of Natos "precision-guided"
missiles, of which only 2 per cent hit military targets. Wark asked
not a single question about this, or about any civilian deaths.
These are not isolated
examples, but the BBC "style." What matters is that the received
wisdom dominates and is protected. When a US missile killed 62 people
at a market in Baghdad, BBC News affected a fake "who can tell
whos responsible?" neutrality, a standard technique when
the atrocity is "ours." On Newsnight, a BBC commentator dismissed
the carnage with these words: "Its a war after all... But
the coalition aim is to unseat Saddam Hussein by winning hearts and
minds." His voice trailed over images of grieving relatives.
Regardless of the
spat over Andrew Gilligans attempt to tell the truth about the
Blair governments lying, the BBCs amplifying of government
lies about a "threat" from Iraq was routine. Typically on
7 January, BBC1s 6pm news bulletin reported that British army
reservists were being called up "to deal with the continuing threat
posed by Iraq." What threat?
During the 1991
Gulf war, BBC audiences were told incessantly about "surgical strikes"
so precise that war had become almost a bloodless science. David Dimbleby
asked the US ambassador: "Isnt it in fact true that America,
by dint of the very accuracy of the weapons weve seen, is the
only potential world policeman?"
Dimbleby, like his
news colleagues, had been conned; most of the weapons had missed their
military targets and killed civilians.
In 1991, according
to the Guardian, the BBC told its broadcasters to be "circumspect"
about pictures of civilian death and injury. This may explain why the
BBC offered us only glimpses of the horrific truth that the Americans
were systematically targeting civilian infrastructure and conducting
a one-sided slaughter. Shortly before Christmas 1991, the Medical Education
Trust in London estimated that more than 200,000 Iraqi men, women and
children had died in the "surgical" assault and its immediate
aftermath.
An archive search
has failed to turn up a single BBC item reporting this. Similarly, a
search of the BBCs coverage of the causes and effects of the 13-year
embargo on Iraq has failed to produce a single report spelling out that
which Madeleine Albright, Bill Clintons secretary of state, put
so succinctly when asked if the deaths of half a million children were
a price worth paying for sanctions. "We think the price is worth
it," she replied.
There was plenty
of vilifying of the "Beast of Baghdad," but nothing on the
fact that, up to July 2002, the United States was deliberately blocking
more than $5bn worth of humanitarian and reconstruction aid reaching
Iraq aid approved by the UN Security Council and paid for by
Iraq. I recently asked a well-known BBC correspondent about this, and
he replied: "Ive tried, but theyre not interested."
There are honourable
exceptions to all this, of course; but just as BBC production values
have few equals, so do its self-serving myths about objectivity, impartiality
and balance have few equals myths that have demonstrated their
stamina since the 1920s, when John Reith, the BBCs first director
general, secretly wrote propaganda for the Tory Baldwin government during
the General Strike and noted in his diaries that impartiality was a
principle to be suspended whenever the established order and its consensus
were threatened.
Thus, The War Game,
Peter Watkinss brilliant film for the BBC about the effects of
a nuclear attack on Britain, was suppressed for 20 years. In 1965, the
chairman of the BBCs board of governors, Lord Normanbrook, secretly
warned the Wilson government that "the showing of the film on television
might have a significant effect on public attitudes towards the policy
of the nuclear deterrent."
Generally speaking,
outright bans are unnecessary, because "going too far," which
Watkins did, is discouraged by background and training. That the BBC,
like most of the Anglo-American media, reports the fate of whole societies
according to their usefulness to "us," the euphemism for western
power, and works diligently to minimise the culpability of British governments
in great crimes, is self-evident and certainly unconspiratorial. It
is simply part of a rich tradition.
Copyright John Pilger